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On Sunday 14 Nov 2004 08:11, Tony Sumner wrote:
Since attending the Debian masterclass I have been keen to get on
board the debian wagon. So I took my laptop along to the Paignton meet
to get some expert help on a debian install. That was a start but there
was a lot more to do and I thought it might help someone if I write down
what I did and what happened. Most people on this list won't need it
but there may be a few like me who have to chip away at a mountain of
ignorance to get to the gold inside.
A -- on a Dell laptop
1 Neil Williams installed debian Woody from CD for me. There was
no X - an error message like 'no configured screen' - but there
is a debian system and Neil takes me through the apt basics.
2 I download the .iso image for sarge, burn a CD and go through the
install again. Now xdm seems to get started but that is all. I get
a log in screen but after logging in I get nothing to look at. Waving
the mouse produces a ghostly green menu that flickers and dies.
3 I decided to give up on the laptop and try installing on a desktop
instead, again from the .iso image.
B -- on a desktop PC
4 Push in the .iso CD and go through the installation. This goes well
but at the end there is no X at all. /etc/X11 does not exist.
5 My Red Hat PC starts with kdm so I do apt-get install kdm. This
installs ok but no change otherwise; typing 'kdm' does
nothing. /etc/X11 now exists though.
6 I fool about in this fashion for ages until I realise that the
basic installer does not give you an X server. I also discover the
package list at
ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/dists/sarge/main/binary-i386/packages.gz
It is worth downloading this (I do have ftp working) because it
tells you what the various programs are called, eg emacs is emacs21.
It is helpful to have a summary list from something like
grep ^Package package-list >package-summary
7 What I need is xserver-common and xserver-xfree86. I get these
and kde, reboot and kde springs to life as if by magic.
8 Until now I have been connected to the net via an ethernet cable
to the router. I need to get the wireless adapter working so that
I can move the PC out of everyone's way. I apt-got linux-wlan-ng
and linux-wlan-ng-doc. I am already familiar with this so installing
is fairly easy though tedious since you have to compile the kernel
(2.4.27). It's a Netgear MA111, which uses the prism2 chipset.
The instructions are in
/usr/share/doc/linux-wlan-ng-doc/README.Debian.gz
At the end, if you have a USB adapter, you are thrown back to the
maintainer's documentation, which is confusing to say the least.
What I have done is put the commands
#!/bin/sh
wlanctl-ng wlan0 lnxreq_ifstate ifstate=enable
wlanctl-ng wlan0 lnxreq_autojoin ssid="linux-wlan"
authtype=opensystem dhclient wlan0
in /usr/local/bin and run the script from root after booting up.
I have so far failed to get this included with the boot process.
9 When I disconnected the ethernet cable and moved the PC upstairs
kde stopped working. More later.
10 That just leaves mail. The MTA is exim or exim4. I hit on the
idea of typing man exim (man exim4 is the same) and at the end it
suggests '/usr/share/doc/exim4-base', a directory that contains
README.Debian.gz. I gunzip this and it tells me to run
dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config
This runs an interactive configure script apparently based on curses.
Is this perhaps what is meant by debconf? The script takes me through
configuring exim4 and it is all very easy. I create ~/.muttrc and
all at once I am sending e-mail hither and yon. I get the
idea that there may be other files called README.Debian.gz and
yes there are: 'find /usr/share/doc -name README.Debian.gz' gives you
a full list.
11 apt-get fetchmail, then copy ~/.fetchmailrc from my Red Hat system.
I can now fetch mail from my mailbox.
12 All done, except that I don't have a browser. When I switch on I get
the kdm screen and the invitation to log in but the keyboard is dead.
None of the keys has any effect. I can still (with the mouse) ask
for a console login and continue that way. The keyboard section in
/etc/X11/XF86Config-4 looks ok to me. It was working at step 7 above.
I might try re-installing the X server.
Tony Sumner
Thanks,Tony.That was a really enjoyable read.I'm in much the same position with the development edition of Yoper.I'm not sure whether there is an AMD 64 version of Debian,but I do know Woody didn't take too kindly to the TFT monitor on the Duron.It was going so well prior to that. Right across the board,whichever distro you chose,X servers are the one thing that causes the most hassle during installation. In the short time I've been using Linux,~sorry~GNU/Linux,I can see how things are coming on in leaps and bounds.It's only a matter of time til these issues become a dimly-recalled nightmare of the past. We'll all be looking back and laughing at this one day. Meanwhile,I share as much information as possible with the developers at Yoper.Forward the XF86 0.0 log in var/logs after an abortive install,for example.Submit the out put from lspci-give as much hardware detail as possible... Sadie
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